America’s Coming Depression

No, I don’t mean an economic depression. I mean an emotional depression. I fear that a funk could hit a significant portion of the population over the next five years. Tens of millions of lives will be affected. There will be substantial economic hardship. Fortunes will be lost. Media empires will be rattled. Some municipalities will face bankruptcy. Universities and colleges across the country will face new funding pressures. The changes that I see coming will reshape a cornerstone of the American way of life.

What could possibly cause this? The answer is that American football is in very, very serious trouble.

2,450 players have now filed 89 concussion related law suits against the NFL and Riddell Athletics (helmet manufacturer) . All of the State cases are being referred to Federal Court.

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I’m no expert on this topic. I follow (among others) ESPN and NFL Concussion Litigation. I have recently talked with four attorneys (none directly involved – all sue for a living). The cut to the chase question for the lawyers was:

“Will there be financial awards?”

Four out of four were quick to answer:

“Yes.”

The dark side for American football depends on whether these four attorneys are right.

The suits against the NFL/Riddle are based on the fact that a significant number of players have received permanent brain injuries while playing for the NFL. There are dozens of reports that prove this. A Michigan University study of former players found that:

“Alzheimer’s disease or similar-memory related diseases occur ‘vastly’ more often than the national population – including a rate of 19 times the normal rate for men ages 30-49.”

NY Giant’s ex ace QB, Jeff Hostetler, has filed a suit against the NFL. A review of the court papers (Link – paragraphs 47-117) lists the medical conclusions that football is directly linked to permanent brain injury. It's going to be very hard for the NFL to beat this.

That football is dangerous and players might get traumatic brain injuries is old news. The basis of the suits is that the NFL teams, knowing full well the risks that the players were taking, willfully ignored the scientific evidence, and repeatedly put the players at neurological risk.

A critical issue for the teams/players is, "What did the teams do when a player incurred a head injury during play/practice?" As far back as 1999 it was shown that players who received a concussion during practice or a game were 4Xs more likely to receive another concussion in the following 10 days.

The NFL ignored this information. It was not until 2009 that it established rules that required players who exhibited any sign of concussion had to be removed from a game or practice, and be barred from returning the same day. But there are hundreds of documented cases since 2009 where players who received a head injury that produced symptoms of concussion who were returned to the playing field within minutes of the original injury.

The problem that the teams face is that it’s not possible to diagnose a minor concussion on the field. The league established a practice of identifying a player with a concussion as one who had to be carried off on a stretcher. The lawsuits allege that the teams/NFL knew the facts on concussions, and their documented actions put the players at risk. This is referred to as Willful Misconduct. If the juries agree with this (I think they have to), then the financial awards will go through the roof.

Can the NFL afford these suits? Some say they can, and point to the fact that the 32 teams have a value in excess of $40 billion, and revenues of $20+ Billion a year. I don’t think this argument stands up. There are 1,700 active pro players each year. The suits will go back at least ten-years. The evidence is that as many as 60% of all players have suffered multiple concussions during their careers. When a class action settlement is made, thousands of additional players will seek compensation. The individual awards will be in the millions. Based on this, the total damages could easily exceed $20 billion. That would put a very deep hurt on the NFL and the team owners.

An import question for the courts will be Riddell Sports’ liability. If there is liability on behalf of Riddell, it creates a major problem. Can Riddell (the official provider of helmets for the NFL) continue to make helmets knowing full well that every helmet that goes out the door is a lawsuit to be in the future? I would think not.

I’ll come back to the problems with the NFL, but first some thoughts on college, high school and pre-teen football. There has to be some very substantial changes for this group of athletes. The medical evidence is clear. The younger a person receives head injuries, the greater the chance of a lifetime consequences.

When the lawyers finish busting up the NFL, they will turn their sights onto colleges and high schools. In our litigious society more football suits are a sure thing. What will happen to the big football schools? All of these Universities have mega endowments. The schools are sitting ducks for lawsuits. Then there is the moral issue. How can a University field a team knowing that half of the players are taking life time risks?

I can imagine that Penn/Ohio State will be one of the last Universities to come to grip with this problem, but what about the Ivy’s? Can Yale, Cornell, Brown etc. stand up to the coming suits? I would think not. The legal risks are too high. Can the Trustees at Harvard (or the Army/Navy/Air Force) put their students at risk of turning their brains into Jell-O?

The only question I have is which University is going to drop football first.

High school football is at risk. The evidence is clear that the earlier in life a person receives multiple head injuries, the greater the probability of medical complications later in life. Will individual towns that sponsor high school teams get sued in the future? It would appear that this is inevitable. Knowing that they may get sued will force changes. But the most compelling argument is, again, the moral one. How can a municipality support a sport that it knows will cause traumatic injury to the players? Based on the information now available, we know that football for high school is like giving kids cigarettes. A percentage of the players will be affected in their lives.

A check of the Internet shows that across the country the issue of high school football is up for discussion.

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Now go back to the NFL. What’s the future?

- The existing suits (and those that are coming) will result in payouts to former players and substantial losses.

- The suits will force changes in the way that football is played. The suggestions on how to reduce the risk of head injuries include:

I)No kick offs or punt returns. (What?)

II) No blocking or tackling above the waist. (Impossible)

III) Strict rules on a player who does use his upper body when making plays. Players who break the new contact rules will face multiple game suspensions. Repeat offenders will not be allowed to play. (There would be few players left)

IV) Players will be forced to wear new uniforms that substantially increase padding. New helmets with both a soft and a hard surface will be the rule. Players will look like the Michelin Man on the field. The ability to run fast and maneuver will be diminished. (Think of this, it doesn't work)

V) Television will be banned from showing any hard hits. Announcers will be forced to not speak of any aggressive blocking and tackling. (The assumption is that the TV attention on those doing the hard hits contributes to the number of injuries.) (Boring....)

There will be more rules. A significant one is what will teams do when and if a player does have a head bump during practice or a game. The players will have to be monitored, assessed, evaluated or otherwise examined to insure that any transitory or permanent injury is properly recognized, diagnosed and treated before allowing return to play.

How can the NFL teams maintain this standard? If every player who had head contact was forced to sit out the rest of the game, then the teams would run out of players before the 4th quarter. (The scrubs take over at the end of a game? Where's the fun in that?)

What is the future of the NFL if/when these changes are implemented? I’m curious to hear from readers. I think it will kill the public interest in the game. From an audience perspective, the hard-hitting nature of the sport is part of the reason for the popularity. Without the speed and action (hard hits) on the field, pro football will lose fans.

I conclude that American football is going to have to go through some radical changes. High School teams will disappear; college and university ball is going to be suspended by some schools. Pro-football is going to be transformed into something that will not work.

Sorry if I have ruined some reader's Father's Day. Try to enjoy it anyway.

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I do not think that these cases are such an easy slam dunk. Football is a recognized dangerous activity, as are other active sports such as ski jumping, skateboarding, auto racing etc. There are known dangers that someone agrees to by taking place in the game, and they are getting paid VERY WELL to do so.

Each sport has some danger, some more than others. If the players were outright lied to about their condition (they have a concussion but the doctor misdiagnoses it on purpose), that is another thing altogether. I think some hiding of facts went on but not as much as all these lawsuits claim.

It is an easy call to see what will happen if they employ new rules:

1. Salaries across the board would get cut down.

2. Rosters would be expanded by at least 10-15 players per team.

3. Teams would send in the lower caliber players on purpose to try to knock the high end guys out of the game with a hard hit - make the rules easier to get someone out of the game and odds are every team will try to take advantage of it. Look at the "bounty" issue currently in the news - expect more of the same except there would be nothing that formal or organized so as to not get caught.

In 2016 when Hillary Clinton is elected President with Vice President Bill, each player will be assigned their own sideline attorney so they can file suit after each play. The over/under will no longer be points but how many lawsuits are filed

Just take off the face masks. That'll satisfy everyone. You certainly would have to more a tough guy to play w/o a face mask right? And you'd certainly have to smarter where you stick your head w/o one.

Just another corrupt institution, professional and college sports. What would the US be like if one day, all those on Wall Street, in Hollywood and the media, and all atheletes just vanished. No actors, no sporst stars, no Wall Street banksters, no robber corporate CEO's, no talking heads.

Ah the Sound of Silence. Maybe we would all go back to work making things.

How about the death of spectatorism... exercise by proxy. Why not get off the couch, put down the deep fried banana ice cream puff and take up hiking, biking, golf (walking), exercising the dog (and yourself). How many football games can the average person watch without noticing that their own health is deteriorating?

but I see baseball as a 20th century, even 19th century sport-- very slooooowww. It's a past-time. Yawn.... And football is headed the same direction, when you can't closeline anymore. I see all professional sports as too long of a season. The love of money. I'm weary of it.

The overt appeal of football is to the worse impulses of organized violence and aggression.

George Carlin saw it exactly:

Baseball begins in the spring, the season of new life. Football begins in the fall, when everything's dying.

Baseball is different from any other sport, very different. For instance, in most sports you score points or goals; in baseball you score runs. In most sports the ball, or object, is put in play by the offensive team; in baseball the defensive team puts the ball in play, and only the defense is allowed to touch the ball. In fact, in baseball if an offensive player touches the ball intentionally, he's out; sometimes unintentionally, he's out.

Also: in football, basketball, soccer, volleyball, and all sports played with a ball, you score

with the ball and in baseball the ball prevents you from scoring.

In most sports the team is run by a coach; in baseball the team is run by a manager. And only in baseball does the manager or coach wear the same clothing the players do. If you'd ever seen John Madden in his Oakland Raiders uniform, you'd know the reason for this custom.

Now, I've mentioned football. Baseball & football are the two most popular spectator sports in this country. And as such, it seems they ought to be able to tell us something about ourselves and our values.

I enjoy comparing baseball and football:

Baseball is a nineteenth-century pastoral game.Football is a twentieth-century technological struggle.

Baseball is played on a diamond, in a park. The baseball park!Football is played on a gridiron, in a stadium, sometimes called Soldier Field or War Memorial Stadium.

Baseball begins in the spring, the season of new life.Football begins in the fall, when everything's dying.

In football you wear a helmet.In baseball you wear a cap.

Football is concerned with downs - what down is it?Baseball is concerned with ups - who's up?

In football you receive a penalty.In baseball you make an error.

In football the specialist comes in to kick.In baseball the specialist comes in to relieve somebody.

Football is played in any kind of weather: rain, snow, sleet, hail, fog...In baseball, if it rains, we don't go out to play.

Baseball has the seventh inning stretch.Football has the two minute warning.

Baseball has no time limit: we don't know when it's gonna end - might have extra innings.Football is rigidly timed, and it will end even if we've got to go to sudden death.

In baseball, during the game, in the stands, there's kind of a picnic feeling; emotions may run high or low, but there's not too much unpleasantness.In football, during the game in the stands, you can be sure that at least twenty-seven times you're capable of taking the life of a fellow human being.

And finally, the objectives of the two games are completely different:

In football the object is for the quarterback, also known as the field general, to be on target with his aerial assault, riddling the defense by hitting his receivers with deadly accuracy in spite of the blitz, even if he has to use shotgun. With short bullet passes and long bombs, he marches his troops into enemy territory, balancing this aerial assault with a sustained ground attack that punches holes in the forward wall of the enemy's defensive line.

In baseball the object is to go home! And to be safe! - I hope I'll be safe at home!

I remember watching a Patriots vs Chiefs game w/ my bro at BC field way back. We watched from the endzone and there was a huge lineman for the Chiefs, Jim Tyrer, who I later heard, killed himself. Two of the common results of brain injury are aggressiveness and sexual behaviors. If you injure your pre-frontal cortex, behind the eyebrows, you can loose your ability to make moral judgments and will hit on women wherever you are.

Its easy. Just shift over to European football. More interesting in my opinion, more popular globally, a lot cheaper for kids, would not have to change stadiums around and no extremely annoying commercials every 23 seconds. Or just change the rules and make it more like rugby which has a lot of the benefits of soccer.

Wow JohnnyQ, your stupidity is astonishing. Maybe you haven't heard of all that stuff involved in this situation. We thumb users refer to it as "money" or "cash". You should probably go back to your bucket of raw red meat, re-insert your head and leave important topics like this to the adults. Also, soccer happens to be the most popular sport on the planet, but since words consisting of more than four letters confuse you, I am not surprised that it's finer points surpass your cognitive abilities.

As a young sportswriter years ago, I always wondered how bad those hits were. I used to see college jocks hauled off really up close, really out of it.

College ball finally got too $$$ oriented for me. I don't even follow my alma matta anymore. The pros use 'em for farm teams free of charge, and the kids do not get a full education. It used to be if the kid played out his 4 years but still needed a few courses to graduate, well, too bad, chump. Pay for it yourself.

A collegue pays 250K$ to the football club every year. What if those funds went to education?

As far as the Pros, forget it. Half of 'em always seem to be out on bail.

Libs can't stand sports because it is the ultimate conservative paradigm. (Libs who like sports are more conservative than they realize.) Some are born more talented and some work harder and longer. And then there are winners and losers. And people get hurt, just like in life. No one makes it out alive, long enough timeline... Of course, what do I know? I am just a woman in Texas with a lineman teenage son who is also going to be class valedictorian.

Reading the evolution of sports rules as brought by US citizens rewards.

Everything has been made to release a binary outcome: winner/looser.

One cause football is hated in the US of A is that it is poorly codified by US citizen standards as stalemate is an important feature in the game. The outcome might be as well noone wins, noone loses and this does not suit US citizen tastes. You have to go a winner and a loser.

2) Sports Illustrated ran a cover page article in 2000 about the coaching community reaching concensus that Darwins natural selection had proven that black players were genetically superior and that reverse racism was the rule of the day.

3) Had cable /Dish disconnected when Obama was sworn in.

4) Living a full , healthy life and don't miss pro- sports even a little bit.

So, why all of the sudden should football head injuries be singled out, and treated so differently than knee, ankle, neck, back, shoulder, foot, or hand injuries? Nobody is asking Joe Namath how his knees are doing.

And what about the head injuries in all other sports? Even Gymnasts and Ballroom dancers are taking hard landings on the noggin, no helmet. Ban everything?

And damage is just as cumulative and permanent to all the other body parts. Those repetitive motion overuse syndrome injuries are by far the most common sports injuries -- bad backs and bad knees galore.

All of the above also occur from soccer, synchronized swimming, basketball, volley ball, baseball, lacrosse, wrestling, to bicycling. Ballet dancers may end up with chronic foot problems. Shall we ban them all?

Most deaths in sports occur traveling to practice and competitions. Marching bands and chess teams take on those same risks. Everybody knows the risks. It's called life.

I smell a shakedown of pigskin football because it's quentissentially an American sport. Just like the American litigation industry. Wet T-shirt contests are no longer safe, God forbid somebody might catch cold.

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i will indeed send all 3 of my sons out to play. i would, above all else, have them become men, whatever the cost may be. please, please, please; for the sake of my boys (who will be men) hook your boys on all manner of pharma and faggoty nonsense...mine will subsume your own..they will take them in, absorb their weakness and baptize it unto strength. make your boys fodder, please. it is my most sincere prayer.

in the immortal words of my momma and chris rock's momma, "i ain't raisin no babies!"

life is full of peril. go out and grab it; lest it grab you first, bitcheZ.

Enjoy your kid having to wear a diaper by the age of 50 because of all the anal sex he will be receiving.

Anyways, anybody here play pick up games in jr. high or high school? Did anyone ever lead with their heads when tackling? No. They turned the helmets into weapons, that is the problem. Same with the NHL using hard plastic on elbow and shoulder pads. What was meant to protect is now a weapon.

Dana - You hit the nail on the head. Across the board, the protection has become the weapon. Gaelic Football is exciting and compelling as a sport for many reasons including the absence of helmets. the fact that the players don't play for 8 seconds and then take a 4 minute break, and for many other reasons involving skill, quality of play, etc. Australian Football, Rugby and many other 'dangerous' sports do not allow players to wear helmets and these sports don't seem to have the same degree of problems. (They also exist in countries where lawyers don't rule culture in the same way the do here - and that comes from a guy with a dad, brother, sister, and brother-in-law and siister-in-law al attorneys).

I know I wouldn't be throwing my head into another player without a helmet on it. Further, as my son play football at the age of 10, I was shocked by the size of the helmet he is forced to wear. Meanwhile, my co-worker note, "Oh yeah - just so you know - there will be an injury just about every game because of the size of the helmets when kids try to run through a pack of kids and don't realize how damn large their helmets are." I was never permitted to play, and we've been lucky with my son. But, every game I feel like I might be allowing him to get paralyzed. Then again, I feel the same way every time he climbs to the top of a playset, etc.

No helmets, no hard plastics, etc. and injuries would plummet. There will still be outliers, but I doubt the average life span for a professional football player would remain below 60.

You are all simply making it worse. The world is risky. If you do not want to earn millions per year at age 23 running down a grass field, then don't.

If you do, have the fvcking common sense to realise that the 300 lb guy who runs a 4.3 40 yd dash and who is headed directly at you at a full run, is going to cause you physical harm when the two of you collide at 50 mph.

Really, everyone in the USA is now officially stupid. How is it remotely possible that NFL players can claim that they did not know injury was possible?

I have left NA for Asia. I suggest you do the same.

What a 'Safety First!", feminised nighmare.

The nation is now full of pussies and those End-of-Empire signposts just continue to flash by your window as you hurtle down the road.

May as well let women just tell you all how to live your lifes and run your country.

out here on the left coast we are mourning Jr Seau, local football star (O'side HS, USC, Chargers, and a few more). he shot himself in the CHEST, much as Mike Duerson, Chi Bears, did to preserve his brain for research, though last heard Jr's family hasn't allowed his brain to be studied. his fiance said he sometimes sat in front of the TV staring when the TV wasn't on, and that he had insomnia. a few years ago he flashed a warning signal by driving his SUV off the edge of the road by the ocean. being a linebacker Jr made his share of hits. and let's not put it all on the NFL, this guy was playing football since high school. hard hitting football.

and certainly its no worse than the case of Lyle Alzeda, defensive lineman for Oakland, who abused steroids, and died in his 50's of brain cancer, these guys make choices, (what choices have you made to success?) or countless others, the life expectancy of professional athletes should be a bit higher, concussions or no concussions.

and just for thought, Tony Gywnn, hall of fame player from the SD Padres, had major surgery for oral cancer (brought on by chewing tobaccy) and he owes the IRS half a million..

and Tony is a stand up guy. all agree. (while Phil Mikelson is putting in a bid to buy Tony's old team) what did you say about golf Bruce?

Lera - the era of 'boys will be boys' as I watch 8 year olds getting suspended from school for puxhing other boys during outdoor recess. Meanwhile, teachers from when I was in school said they used to watch and pretend not to see certain kids getting an ass whipping when they deserved it - they'd count to 10 before they moved to break-up a fight. Now, kids in elementary school playgrounds are treated like prisoners where bus drivers are the guards. They wander around afraid to do anything that might get them in trouble.

Our American culture has always been prudish in sexuality compared to our neighbors in Central and South America as well as Europe. Now, we are self-emasculating the 1/2 of the human race by allowing rules to be made from birth on not permitting boys to act like boys. Girls can still play all the games played when I was a kid. Boys are banned from any contact at all. I notice it's made boys prissier than girls. The boys have learned that they can't teach the tattle-tale a lesson by kicking the ever living shit out of him after school. Now it becomes a competition to see who can rat out other boys first. In the days where kids fought, they worked things out in 1 day and became friends. This is all part of the football issue, and where it starts. They want boys to accept the absence of football in the same way they've acceptedd the other emasculation started in the 1980s or earlier.

What if the NFL went bankrupt for whatever reason? And what if some colleges had to drop football and lots of classes because the student loan bubble finally pops? And what if a lot of municipalities decided they could no longer afford sports programs? A few of months of misery until everyone found something better to do. After a few years football would be forgotten and gone forever.

College Football will survive for the largest and deepest pockets. Some weak hands will be shaken out, such as Div 2, 3, etc.

The non-Ivy League universities, especially the public universities, realize that their entire endowment and fundraising network is built around the athletic programs as the mechanism for re-connecting the alumnus or alumna back to the institution.

Prediction: The country will become more of a nanny state but football will survive with some modifications to rules and equipment, to take high force impacts out of the game, namely a return to the running game and a de-emphasis on the modern passing game, as force = mass * (velocity2).

So, the most impactful manner in which you take force out of the game is to slow it down, which means a return to a more rugby-like 1950s style of running gmae played between the tackles. The casual viewer may not like it as much, but it will be driven by a legal settlement as the former stars/players will not want to be known as the dumb, greedy types who destroyed the game that made them (i.e., very bad p.r.).

Nader suggests that instead of private ownership of teams (with public ownership of the stadiums - corporate welfare - that cities take an interest in owning the teams outright) that the public own the team teams. i tend to agree

I always thought football, boxing, bull fighting were sports that always had a danger sign on them. No matter which sport, the animals get taken out more often than not. Never have been a fan of any of them but it is hard to believe that those that decide on their own to get involved do not know the dangers of being "cool" and running with a ball. But, I guess we no longer need to be responsible, intelligent and make our own decisions. If it does not work out, then just sue. After all, this is America.

Football is little more than a vehicle for inducing mass idiocy. It will be a monumentally happy day when high schools and universities are freed from bondage to big time spectator sports. Too bad basketball will still be around.